We had couple of shopping streets(not complexes) in Durgapur. The closest one to Steel House hostel was a shopping street ‘Benachity’, where we never tried taking snaps or to record memories, but most of our shopping used to be from that place .It was around 2 miles from Steel House. We go straight to Durgapur Club and take a left to benachity. It was a real big 2-2.5 mile street(like Las Vegas’ strip) .You get book shops, sari houses , groceries , vegetables ,electronics , house hold items , furniture, ice cream parlors, hotels, transport communications(of course only STD in those days-No internet).,shoe shops etc… One problem with the street though, they are open only from 10 to1 pm/2 pm and closed for 2-3 hours. Then they are open in the evening . Most of the shops have somewhat lazy sales guys who are mainly recruited/allotted by trade unions. I remember couple of experiences where we tried to bargain items and the salesmen were angry/impatient and they asked us to go to another shop.Same situation in other shops too.We got used to the work culture slowly.One important thing that south Indians definitely remember was the Madras stores, it is one of the oldest stores and a Tamil guy was the owner.He used to get all the spices that we needed.He was multilingual.We really felt happy to see some body talking to us in Telugu.He was also the distributor of Telugu magazines such as Swati, Bhoomi , Film magazines(Sitara , Jyothi chitra etc..)His tore was also very close to the vegetable market .So it is like we get everything in that particular street itself. First day we landed in Durgapur, almost every gang (south, north, and east west. AGAIN IN South Telugu, Tamil etc…) was there and looking at the town .Benachity was real representative of Durgapur. There are mini buses from there (Prantika)to almost all corners of Durgapur. Benachity was very good as we get everything there. In those days (1993-August) we did not find many STD booths. There were two STD booths in Benachity to Biringi. We used to go to a place called ‘Prantika-Heart of Benachity’ and a decent restaurant. We used to have dinner there some times (mostly when our mess is closed-Saturday/Sunday). First we go to the STD booth (it is actually a big room where at least 20-25 people wait to get their turn).There was no queue as such. People wait there after they write/register their numbers. The guy will try to dial the numbers in order but, if u r unlucky your number is busy or connection problem, u need to wait again. Once we register the name /number, we go to prantika restaurant and order items and complete the dinner (Mainly one main course-Sabjee and Roti/Naan etc..)After we check out we go and check our luck at STD booth. In those days the pulse was also expensive .Raju who was the only married guy of our gang, used to call his Mavayya (wife’s father) and wife. He has not allotted the marriage quarters yet. Unfortunately though my parents at Hyderabad did not have Phone connection in 1993.So first three years, I did not talk to my parents over phone from Benachity.
Once, myself and Arun kumar jain went to benachity .Venkatesh, Sagar, Jayanth and Veerraju were also there but after reaching the first booth(near Pranthika), Raju registered his number(in line/queue) but Arun Jain was upset with the rush and asked me whether I can accompany him for his call to another booth(close to the end of the street-Biringi).We both started walking towards the booth and it was really far but we were close friends then and were talking about so many things. Arun Jain was a short, smart and possesses excellent Hindi and English spoken skills. He was from Hardwar and I was invited to his place and we were also discussing, planning about going to Purl also once. He also wanted Bhagat to be joined .There was another guy called Manish Gupta looks very similar to Arun Jain Short/Smart but ‘V’ shape face. For some reason I was not sure whether I wanted Manish as part of our group. As we discuss/plan things we reached the Booth. To our utter astonishment this booth was definitely different than the one at Pranthika. Definitely less crowded and lot cleaner. Arun registered his number and we were sure that our call will be connected and we will be done within next 20 minutes. The guy was dialing numbers and he connected a girl to her registered number. We were watching the girl (as we did not have anything else to do ), frankly there was no privacy. you go to a booth and talk in front of every body. This girl was in a very decent dress and she seems to be talking to her boy friend (though it is not uncommon during those days but not a very common thing as of Today.).We started paying more attention to her conversation. It seems she was asking her boy friend to be confident as he is worried, how to tell their parents about this etc… She was consoling him that she would be there in that city (her native place) and both of them could think about strategies on what needs to be done to convince parents and how to survive by getting right jobs and managing their lives(Like QSQT movie).But the guy was asking lot of questions. Though this girl wanted to end the conversation that guy was really worried and was not ready for disconnection. Finally, this continued for almost 15 minutes and she paid around 600 Rupees .It was a big amount for us in those days as we used to get Rs.3265/- per month during our training. We were upset after the conversation for couple of reasons, For making us wait for 20 more minutes and reminding us that we did not have a confident girl friend(Sorry.. we did not even have a normal girl friend).
Anyway jain finished his turn and we were walking back to Steel House. This time both of us were upset to the core (though did not disclose) and the distance also seemed more. We did not actively continue our plans of Hardwar trip, Puri trip etc… Just discussed about how frustrated we are to be away from parents and close friends back home.